A Trial by Podcast

In March of 1977, Tucson escrow agent Charles Morgan dropped his daughters at school and vanished. Three days later he stumbled through his front door, hands zip-tied, unable to speak. He wrote to his wife that his throat had been doused with a hallucinogenic drug that would kill him if he talked, and begging her not to call police. Morgan ran Statewide Escrow Service, a business rumored to have ties to organized crime figures in Phoenix and the Bonanno crime family.
Three months later, on June 18th, his body was found in the desert forty miles from home, shot once in the back of the head with his own revolver. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a hidden knife and holster, with no fingerprints on the gun beside him. Gunshot residue was found on his left hand, but Morgan was right-handed.
Despite the contradictions, authorities ruled it suicide. His family has never accepted that finding, and nearly fifty years later, Chuck Morgan's death remains a mystery.

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Theme Music: https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/mr-mischief
License code: MOYK9CTUWGH7BLCS

Sources for this episode will be posted at atrialbypodcast.com within 30 days of the publish date.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. While we research thoroughly and use credible, publicly available information, it should not be considered a legal or definitive authority. We cannot guarantee veracity or completeness. Neither host is a lawyer, journalist, or investigator — views expressed are personal and should not be taken as fact. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research. This podcast is not intended to harm, slander, or defame any individual, group, or organization. All individuals discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Questions or concerns? Reach us at atrialbypodcast@gmail.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the night of May 27th, 1991, a fourteen-year-old boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone stumbled out of the Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was naked, drugged, and bleeding. Three women found him on the sidewalk and called 911. When police arrived, they had everything they needed: a visibly injured victim, three eyewitnesses insisting he was a child, and the man who'd drugged him standing right there, calmly trying to explain it all away. Ten minutes later, officers carried Konerak back upstairs to the man’s apartment - the apartment of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer - where he was strangled to death within the hour.
This isn't a story about whether police could have caught a killer sooner in some abstract sense. It's a story about ten specific minutes, on one specific night, when three private citizens did everything right to stop the murder of a 14-year-old boy, but three sworn officers simply handed him back to his killer. Konerak didn't die because no one noticed. He died because the people who noticed weren’t believed, and the people with the power to act chose not to.

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Theme Music: https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/mr-mischief
License code: MOYK9CTUWGH7BLCS

Sources for this episode will be posted at atrialbypodcast.com within 30 days of the publish date.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. While we research thoroughly and use credible, publicly available information, it should not be considered a legal or definitive authority. We cannot guarantee veracity or completeness. Neither host is a lawyer, journalist, or investigator — views expressed are personal and should not be taken as fact. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research. This podcast is not intended to harm, slander, or defame any individual, group, or organization. All individuals discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Questions or concerns? Reach us at atrialbypodcast@gmail.com.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the afternoon of November 2nd, 2016, a thirty-four-year-old stay-at-home mother named Sherri Papini went for a jog near her home in Mountain Gate, a small community just outside of Redding, in Northern California’s Shasta County. She left her two young children at daycare, laced up her shoes, and headed out into a mild autumn afternoon. She did not come back.
Her husband, Keith Papini, returned from work that evening to find an empty house. The children were still at daycare — uncharacteristically uncollected. He used the Find My iPhone app to trace Sherri’s phone and drove to the location it showed: a roadside near Sunrise Drive, about a mile from their home. What he found there was her cell phone and her earbuds, lying in the dirt on the side of the road. Wound around the earbuds were several strands of blonde hair.
Sherri Papini was gone, and 22 days later she would reappear on the side of a road 150 miles from her home, looking gaunt, with a chain tied around her waist, and the word “exodus” branded into her back. It was a story that seemed to demand justice — and it would, eventually, get it, just not in the way anyone expected.

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📧 Contact: atrialbypodcast@gmail.com

Theme Music: https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/mr-mischief
License code: MOYK9CTUWGH7BLCS

Sources for this episode will be posted at atrialbypodcast.com within 30 days of the publish date.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. While we research thoroughly and use credible, publicly available information, it should not be considered a legal or definitive authority. We cannot guarantee veracity or completeness. Neither host is a lawyer, journalist, or investigator — views expressed are personal and should not be taken as fact. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research. This podcast is not intended to harm, slander, or defame any individual, group, or organization. All individuals discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Questions or concerns? Reach us at atrialbypodcast@gmail.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On the afternoon of November 2nd, 2016, a thirty-four-year-old stay-at-home mother named Sherri Papini went for a jog near her home in Mountain Gate, a small community just outside of Redding, in Northern California’s Shasta County. She left her two young children at daycare, laced up her shoes, and headed out into a mild autumn afternoon. She did not come back.
Her husband, Keith Papini, returned from work that evening to find an empty house. The children were still at daycare — uncharacteristically uncollected. He used the Find My iPhone app to trace Sherri’s phone and drove to the location it showed: a roadside near Sunrise Drive, about a mile from their home. What he found there was her cell phone and her earbuds, lying in the dirt on the side of the road. Wound around the earbuds were several strands of blonde hair.
Sherri Papini was gone, and 22 days later she would reappear on the side of a road 150 miles from her home, looking gaunt, with a chain tied around her waist, and the word “exodus” branded into her back. It was a story that seemed to demand justice — and it would, eventually, get it, just not in the way anyone expected.

⭐ Support the show on Patreon for bonus content & ad-free listening! ⭐
https://www.patreon.com/c/ATRIALBYPODCAST

🎙️Sponsors, special offers & discount codes: https://www.atrialbypodcast.com/sponsors

Find us everywhere:
🔗 All links: https://linktr.ee/atrialbypodcast
🌐 Website: https://atrialbypodcast.com
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558845693491
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atrialbypodcast
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@atrialbypodcast
📧 Contact: atrialbypodcast@gmail.com

Theme Music: https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/mr-mischief
License code: MOYK9CTUWGH7BLCS

Sources for this episode will be posted at atrialbypodcast.com within 30 days of the publish date.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. While we research thoroughly and use credible, publicly available information, it should not be considered a legal or definitive authority. We cannot guarantee veracity or completeness. Neither host is a lawyer, journalist, or investigator — views expressed are personal and should not be taken as fact. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research. This podcast is not intended to harm, slander, or defame any individual, group, or organization. All individuals discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Questions or concerns? Reach us at atrialbypodcast@gmail.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In November 1986, Helle Crafts was reported missing. Danish flight attendant and mother of three, Helle had been planning to leave her husband after discovering he'd been having an affair.
What followed was one of the most gruesome and forensically groundbreaking murder investigations in American history. Because there was no body. There was no crime scene. There was, however, a rented woodchipper, a freezer purchased just days before Helle vanished, and a witness who spotted a man feeding something into a chipper on the banks of the Housatonic River in the dead of a blizzard.
Investigators ultimately recovered bone fragments, a fingernail, strands of blonde hair, and a single crown from Helle's tooth — enough to piece together what Richard Crafts had done to his wife, and enough to put him away. He became the first person in Connecticut history to be convicted of murder without a body.
This is the story of Helle Crafts — and the case that changed forensic investigation forever.

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📧 Contact: atrialbypodcast@gmail.com

Theme Music: https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/mr-mischief
License code: MOYK9CTUWGH7BLCS

Sources for this episode will be posted at atrialbypodcast.com within 30 days of the publish date.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is intended for entertainment purposes only. While we research thoroughly and use credible, publicly available information, it should not be considered a legal or definitive authority. We cannot guarantee veracity or completeness. Neither host is a lawyer, journalist, or investigator — views expressed are personal and should not be taken as fact. Listeners are encouraged to do their own research. This podcast is not intended to harm, slander, or defame any individual, group, or organization. All individuals discussed are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Questions or concerns? Reach us at atrialbypodcast@gmail.com.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.